Our favorite freeeeee art events to check out this weekend

& everything you need to know about the West Side Fest

Jul 12, 2024

∙ Paid

Midnight Blue

The famed Takuma Watanabe just expanded his Gramercy empire with the addition of Midnight Blue on 106 E 19th Street. The new jazz bar, just a few blocks away from his beloved Martiny’s and L’Americana, is a huge walk-in only space with plenty of bar and table seats all centered around live jazz. Our favorite part of Midnight Blue, however, is that of the three nearby restaurants, this spot aims to be the most casual featuring highball cocktail machines and laid-back Japanese bar bites like gyoza. Open Tuesdays – Saturdays from 5p – 1a.

Rider Gifts

Park Slope-based indie gift shop, Rider Gifts recently opened a new location of their successful shop on a bustling block of NYC’s “other” 5th avenue. The new space feels like a considered edit and update of the great product they’ve always been known to stock at their South Slope location. We love this store because it fits an important criteria amongst NYC retail: you can stop here and buy a perfect gift for just about anyone you know. Rider is open Tue-Fri: 12-6p, Sat: 10a-6p and Sun: 10a-4p at 347 5th Avenue and 1016 8th Avenue in Brooklyn.

Caffè Panna

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!!! Just yesterday, the inimitable Gramercy Park gelato shop, Caffè Panna, opened up its first ever Brooklyn location! The new shop, kitchen, and event space housed inside the former Greenpoint zipper factory expands on the window service of the Manhattan location with indoor and outdoor seating. If that’s not enough newness, the BK location will also be debuting Caffè Panna SOFT SERVE!!! Go by and grab a pint at 16 Norman Ave Wednesdays - Sundays from 1:30 - 9:30p.

MOONBURGER Brooklyn

Apparently, this is the week of new locations…and we are so thrilled that our favorite veggie burger from Kingston has brought its delish fast casual food from Upstate to Brooklyn. Tomorrow, MOONBURGER will be opening up at 11:30a in Wburg - the first 50 guests both Saturday + Sunday get FREE CHEESEBURGERS FOR A YEAR. The new spot on the corner of N 10th and Bedford has super cool ~outerspace~ vibes with new beer & wine offerings. Stop by 7 days a week 11:30a-10p.

Today kicks off the West Side Fest – a three-day celebration of arts and culture on Manhattan’s West Side featuring programming from some of the city’s best institutions. Longtime readers will know that part of what we believe makes this city great is how accessible and integral the arts are to the heart of New York. With that in mind, this week’s best of is a breakdown of all the best (&&& FREE) events happening as a part of West Side Fest mixed in with some of our favorite restaurants in the neighborhood.

Read all the best of the West Side Fest

Meet Madeline, the creative powerhouse behind some of the top tier publications in our media diet. Currently, Madeline is an art director at Bloomberg Business Week and the creative director of Byline. You may also recognize her from her own by line…right here at coolstuff.nyc where she recently penned our guide to the Best Magazines and Bookstores in NYC.

How did you get your start as an art director and graphic designer?

I always loved drawing as a kid, and my parents picked up on that and put me in art classes etc., which led me to falling in love with it more and by high school I was seriously considering art school. Getting into graphic design was kind of an accident; I was too afraid to pursue studio art as a major and thought doing something more commercial would be a better bet career wise. Thank god I did because I don’t think I was actually ever that good at fine art, but it led me to something that has been fruitful for me. In college I realized I loved editorial design the most, and I went down the rabbit hole of applying for internships and interviews at different fashion magazines. Eventually I got an internship at one of them, and I’ve been working in magazines ever since!

Tell us about how your past design experience has prepared you for your current positions at Bloomberg Businessweek and Byline.

Before Bizweek and Byline, I had worked at a number of different editorial platforms. I had worked a small web only publication (Man Repeller), a mid size quarterly print and web publication (Domino Magazine), and then at one of the biggest pubs of all, The New York Times, where I worked on their weekly feature sections, the monthly NYT Style Mag, and the daily paper. The diversity of publishing frequencies was a great crash course in editorial design, and made me feel more comfortable and confident. I was also the editorial fellow for part of my tenure at the Times, and getting that mentorship really sharpened my art direction with commissioning illustrations

Byline is the first time I’ve ever branded and designed a real world publication from start to finish, and then continued its evolution. I’m not sure if anything could have prepared me for that, but the aforementioned confidence was a big help. I also think when working in magazines you often become obsessive about the craft. I’ve been trying to immerse myself in that world for a long time, and when it was time to creative direct my own, I felt like I had a grasp of what was out there.

What’s your favorite part about the New York creative community?

I think how small it ends up feeling because of people’s openness and networks. There's always a mutual of a mutual and it ends up creating a space where anyone is accessible to you for friendship, advice, or collaboration. When the co-founders of Byline were looking for a designer to bring it to life, it was a mutual friend of mine and one of the founders who brought us together. Those kinds of things happen all the time in the NY creative community, and for a city this size I feel like that's special.

What's your current biggest inspiration for your design work?

There’s my constant inspirations aka my editorial design heroes: Gail Bichler, Ben Grandgenett, Chloe Scheffe, and Tracy Ma (these are just a few!)
Recently I’ve been really inspired by illustrators/fine artists who have a style that really stops me in my tracks. I think a truly great editorial commission for a story can be rare, and these artists inspire me to find a story they’d be perfect for for some great work. Some examples are Na Kim, Jules Julian, Jennis Li Cheng Tien, Rui Pu, Lulu Lin, and Laurant Allard.

Do you have a favorite graphic design project that you've worked on?

Can I say Byline as a whole? I’ve worked on so many projects at NYT and Bloomberg that I love, but when thinking about this question I underestimated how having something that is completely your own visually makes you so fond of it. There are some projects that aren’t Byline that were probably executed better, or have much more robust art, but to be able to look at the entirety of something and know you created it, makes them the favorite child by default.

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@madtoya

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